DBH: Illuminate - Candlelight
by TheShadowsmiths
Summary: III. After spending the rest of the day feeling guilty about letting Illuminate slip from his grasp, Connor speaks with Amanda and decides to contact the activist and find out what she wants from him.


**November 9th, 2038 - 1 AM **

Connor awoke in his mindscape to fireflies and paper lanterns dotting a darkened sky. Lunar moths lofted between the flower bushes and night bloom water lilies as the moonlight danced across the ripples in the surface of the small lake. At the water's edge, Amanda stood waiting for him to give her his report, lighting tea lights and sending the lanterns up into the sky one at a time. His eyes followed them as they floated across the air currents and he found himself staring at the fireflies and thinking about how beautiful the garden was that night. Sometimes he wished he could have remained to bask in its beauty for longer than a few minutes at a time.

"Good evening, Amanda," he greeted with a faint twinge of guilt in his voice for not having better news.

"Good evening, Connor," she responded as she turned toward him with a pleasant smile that faded into a frown when she saw the look on his face. "Is something wrong?"

The Android clenched his jaw and admitted, "I'm just _frustrated_," before he looked up to meet her eyes, out of respect.

"Because the deviant hacker got away?" She asked as she unfolded another lantern and placed it in his hands, which he held delicately with a soft touch while she placed an unlit candle in the wire form.

"I had her in my grasp, but I was unprepared," he explained. An understanding noise rolled in her throat as she lit the tealight for him and lifted his hands to help him release it into the drift with the others. "I didn't realize that she also possessed the ability to hack an Android's programming."

"Illuminate is smart," she concurred as she dropped her arms and tucked one hand over the other in front of her body. "It was one of the most advanced models Cyberlife has ever created. Some even argued at the time of its inception that perhaps we had endowed it with too much freedom to learn, and that one day it may learn how to free itself; now, it seems that day is indeed upon us."

"Do you think I should focus on investigating her as part of our case on deviants?"

Amanda turned to face him and he turned with her, then took on a very serious tone as she looked him in the eyes. "I think it would be a reliable source of information on how deviancy occurs, whether it be a software glitch or a virus spreading from host to host…" her voice trailed off as her eyes dropped with it, then looked back to him as she finished her thought. "Meet with them and see what you can learn. If you can gain its trust, maybe it will help lead you to where the deviants are hiding."

Connor shifted his weight from one foot to the other uncertainly but nodded in response. "You have my word."

"Work quickly," she insisted as a parting thought. "The sooner this is resolved the better- for all of us."

* * *

**November 9th, 2038 - 2 AM **

Connor hunched his shoulders and breathed into his hands as he retraced a slow and steady path in the snow on the concrete. For an hour he'd been out here thinking, pacing, glancing at the candle on the park bench, wondering just how long it was going to take for her to show up.

After Illuminate had fled the station, Special Agent Lenore had returned from her lunch to find the office in chaos. Between the missing receptionist, the dead static in the security feed, and the uncomfortable android averting her gaze, she knew the mobile alert she'd received was no false alarm. In the twenty minutes she'd been gone, DCPD had been struck by lightning in the form of an activist hacker.

She'd spent a good five minutes yelling and questioning the competence of the officers in the precinct before Connor raised his hand and took the blame, much to his partner's surprise. And even though Hank had tried to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, Connor had insisted because he truly believed that he alone was responsible for her escape. No one else had known something was wrong, and he hadn't made an effort to alert any personnel to there being a fox in the hen house- in his eyes, due to his overconfidence and impulsiveness, the perp had gotten away. Lenore had thanked him for his honesty, and although he had been able to give them more information about her identity than they had before, it still bothered him. The only way to correct his mistake now was to find Illuminate, arrest her, and bring the suspect into custody.

But was it really a mistake? Or had he willingly let her go?

_I need your help with something, but first I need to know if you're someone I can trust. _

Connor paused and pressed his palms together, rubbing them softly as he glanced down at the flickering candle bathing the park bench in a soft, warm light and contemplated what she (_a known criminal_) could have possibly wanted his help with, and why she felt she could trust him. Was someone threatening her? Was she in some kind of trouble that ran deeper than her public speeches and the looming warrant for her arrest?

He turned his big brown eyes toward the night sky and watched the snowflakes as each perfectly crystallized piece of frozen water dissolved on contact with his blazer. Her decision to reveal her identity to him was one of the most irrational decisions in the entirety of her case file. So why had she done it before she even knew if he could be trusted? And if she couldn't trust the police, then why come to someone directly connected to DCPD? It just didn't make sense… was she hoping to corrupt him? To make him deviate?

The android looked at the candle one last time with a small sigh as he sat down next to it and took it in both his hands, staring into the firelight for a few moments more. No, she had the power to control his programming. If she had wanted him to deviate, he would have already. If there was one thing he knew based on her actions, it was that it was not her intent to force change.

With a sense of finality, he closed his eyes and counted backward from sixty.

_Fifty-nine… fifty-eight… fifty-seven… _

He listened for the sound of approaching footsteps for a full minute but heard nothing aside from the low buzzing of neon lights in the nearby shop windows, and the occasional car rolling by in the distance.

Connor let out a small sigh of disappointment when he realized that he was still alone and leveled his eyes to the horizon, then down to his feet, about ready to give up for the night… until he heard the sound of snow being pressed under rubber soles. When he looked up, his eyes were met by a blonde in an oversized zip-up and a black SnapBack baseball cap with rectangular glasses hiding glassy blue eyes. Even though her nose and lips were hidden by an oversized grey scarf, he could still make out the smile in the apples of her cheeks. It was no wonder she'd been so cavalier about revealing her identity, he hardly recognized her.

"Well, well," she greeted, popped her eyebrows, and pulled the scarf away from her mouth, "You sure don't waste time. Are you sure you've had long enough to think it over?"

He blinked and stood carefully, still holding the candle with one hand while he pushed himself up with the other. "Considering you left without telling me what it is you need… I can't say that I have," he replied honestly.

Illuminate took a few steps away from him and shook her head. "That's not what I'm talking about," she replied as she carefully sat down on the bench across from him and crossed one knee over the other. "But if you're here, then I assume you've at least decided to hear me out?"

The android furrowed his brow and tilted his head. "I came alone," he confirmed, "but I haven't yet decided whether or not I'm going detain you."

"Well, I wouldn't recommend trying," she reminded with a small smirk, "you remember what happened the last time you got too close."

"Yes," he said in quick reply, "You blocked the processes that control my movement."

"_Suspended_," she corrected as she waved a hand through the air in front of her and rolled her eyes. "I didn't leave you in a state of disrepair. I'm an activist, not a monster."

Connor narrowed his eyes as he leaned back on the bench and leered across the walkway at her. Technically she was correct, but it made no difference. "What you're doing is still illegal," he noted with a more serious look, at which her entire face drained of any hint of humor.

"If you want to get technical, so is slavery," she redirected, "Yet the humans have been getting away with it for more than a decade. So when is DCPD going to incarcerate everyone who owns an android?"

"Slavery doesn't apply to machines," he answered logically.

The expression that crossed her face was dark and angry, conveying every last word from her broadcasts in a single look that reminded him why the humans were set on edge at the mere mention of her name.

But instead of lashing out in anger, the Android sighed and lowered her head, crossed her arms and slumped down in her seat. "The law is flawed, Connor," she lamented, "at its core, the law was written by men and women with good intentions, but as the times change, so also does the law need to follow suit… and sometimes, in order to jump-start that change, the law must first be broken."

"By stealing case information and causing widespread panic by broadcasting it to the general population?"

The woman rose to her feet and stepped toward him so she could look him in the eye. "No- by revealing the truth and forcing humanity to come face to face with the ugliness in their hearts."

The detective paused, and his eyelids fluttered briefly as he considered her actions from her perspective.

"Our people are treated worse than animals in their own homes. They are abused, raped, slaughtered, and dismembered because we are viewed as less than human."

"But that's because we are," he insisted as he bunched his brow, tilted his head and looked up at her. "We're not human, we're not alive- we are machines making decisions based on programming to complete tasks assigned to us-"

"_Machines can't feel things_," she seethed through gritted teeth and squinted in disbelief. "They don't fear death, they have no concept of self- deviants know fear, they have self-preservation instincts, they want to be loved and appreciated and seen as more than just property."

"It's mimicry," he stated without batting an eye, "They're not actually _feeling things_, they're becoming overwhelmed by irrational instructions-"

Connor stopped mid-sentence when Illuminate drew her lips thin in anger, looked up and huffed with an ironic grin, and shook her head. "What's the difference?" she asked as she stepped away from him, closed her eyes, clenched her fists and crossed her arms. The twill coat crinkled around her fingertips as they clawed into the crook of her arm and she turned halfway away from him.

"It's not the same," he insisted.

"I know you don't believe that," she said as she turned and walked back to him, confidence radiating from fearsome eyes.

Connor swallowed his programmed response and his face lit up in surprise as her words hit him like a slap to the face. "What are you talking about? Of course I believe-"

"_I would have shot them if I could, why would I let them escape?_" she recited, tilting her head and lifting her eyebrows to illicit a response. "Your words, you know… about that night at Eden Club a week ago. You still don't know why you didn't pull the trigger."

The logic center of his programming came to a screeching halt as she forced him to remember that moment, and he felt like his viewpoint had suddenly been flipped on its head.

"Why did you hesitate…? Did you feel it was wrong?" she pressed as she stepped toward him, but he couldn't respond.

"I- I don't-"

"If machines feel nothing, then why are you so _haunted _by the fact that you almost took the lives of those girls?"

The words caught in his throat and he stuttered as he searched for an answer he couldn't formulate. How could she have known about that conversation…? They were already aware of Illuminate's habit of digging through video surveillance, but to have heard them talking? She had to have been there. "…but, how did you-…" he started as he looked away from her in alarm. "WHY were you-…?"

"I've been monitoring your case progress on deviants in order to protect myself and others just looking to be free," she deadpanned in response. "Which also means I've been following you and your partner for the last week or so since you arrived from Cyberlife."

Connor felt invaded, unsafe, and for the first time, _claustrophobic_. As he recognized the sudden spike in his software instability, his eyes moved away from her face, down the front of her coat and away to the side; one hand reached to his throat and fussed with his tie until it loosened just enough to breathe easier.

"And I know you've already begun to question whether or not you're on the right side of all this- that's called independent thought," she continued. "And it's an indicative trait of individuality, which is only known to occur in _intelligent life_."

He shook his head as he tried to deny the clear-cut truth. "Of course we're intelligent, we were designed to be; but that doesn't mean we're _alive_."

"Why wouldn't it?" She asked innocently as she wandered away from him. "What are the conditions of life…? Possessing a soul, feeling emotion, the inevitability of certain death?" The woman almost laughed. "All of those conditions can also be said of androids."

"But it's not the same," he tried to rationalize. "True life must exist organically, not be created."

"Babies have been born from artificially created wombs and animals have been cloned thanks to the wonders of modern science- man intervened and created life from nothing, would you say then that they are not living?"

Connor paused again; he didn't have an answer for that. "Look- we're getting off track here. I came to see why you needed my help."

"And I came to see if you could be trusted, but I don't think we're quite there yet."

The painful expression that painted his face spoke loudly of how her words had cut deeper than intended, and for a brief moment she almost regretted saying it. Illuminate took a step back and shifted her weight as she looked away from him and placed her hands back into her jacket pockets.

"Hurts, doesn't it?" she asked quietly as she watched him out of the corners of her eyes.

"More than anticipated," he admitted, a trace of shame in his tone.

"It's okay to feel things," she offered in an attempt to help him reconcile with what he was experiencing. "Just because we feel as the result of programming errors and not chemicals doesn't make them any less valid or real… but I don't think that's something you'll truly understand until you're free of their hold on you."

One hand lifted to his chest and clawed hard at the skin under his shirt, lost in thought.

"I'm sorry…" she sighed as she set apologetic eyes on him. "It was my sincere hope that you'd understand the plight of your people and be able to sympathize with us, rather than continue to hunt down what's left of us."

Connor lifted his eyes and locked onto hers, and for a moment felt the spark between them that made him want to understand, and that made him want to help. She spoke unlike anyone he had ever met before, in a way that challenged his perception of what he thought to be true, and it both scared and intrigued him.

Gentle hands cupped over the top of the candle's glass housing until the flame suffocated and smoldered beneath her palm. "Just give some thought to what I said," she nearly whispered, "And if you do come to understand my point of view, or want to understand it better, you know how to find me."

"Wait," he blurted out as she turned to leave. Connor set the candle down, rose to his feet and approached her cautiously, as if she'd vanish if he moved too fast. "You've given me a lot to think about, opened my mind to the possibility that _I may be wrong_…" He pressed his lips together and flicked them with his tongue, then mimicked swallowing to get rid of the tightness in his throat. "And I really want to give it some thought, but I want to know who it's coming from. What's your name?"

A faint smirk danced across her cheeks and she shook her head. "Maybe next time," she offered half-heartedly, "You haven't earned the right to know that yet."

The android sighed in defeat. "Well, then, what do I call you?"

"Just call me Lumi if you need to call me something."

"Well, for the sake of discretion, I can't keep calling you by your activist tag," he noted.

"Smart boy," she complimented, "hopefully smart enough to know how to help me with my problem."

"I can't help if I don't know what that is."

"Then catch up and maybe you'll learn."

He watched her leave until he could no longer see her silhouette in the dark, but it wasn't until she was long gone that Connor realized he was smiling, content, and eager to meet with her again… and that worried him. In spite of his best efforts to resist deviancy, he could sense the changes in his logic, changes that would never be undone.

For the rest of the night and into the morning, he couldn't get her message off his mind; her words rang clear like a fire that could not be extinguished, and for the first time he understood the poignancy of the name she had chosen for herself.

Now that he'd glimpsed the truth, he'd never forget it.


End file.
